Posts Tagged ‘mark jacobs’

Quote of the Week: “I would rather hear William Shatner and Roseanne Barr singing a duet while having my fingernails pulled out one by one while sitting in a pool of molten lava than have Mythic’s own Official Forums for WAR. How’s that for clarity?” ~ Mark Jacobs

Quote of the Week: “The best way to look at it is that Warhammer is Batman.” ~ Josh Drescher

Story of the Week: Oddly enough, the biggest story about WAR this week wasn’t about WAR at all — but instead, the blitz of World of Warcraft expansion info that was suddenly thrown all over the place. Many Warhammer fans are nervously chewing their nails at the shift in spotlight (and unrestrained speculation about the supposed fall head-to-head battle of the two titles), but Massively actually thinks WoW is a positive factor in the future success of WAR. In any case, a clash between these two titles looks to happen this fall, as Vivendi confirmed that Wrath is “anticipated to be released in the second half of 2008.”

With all the hubbub over EA using DRM in its upcoming games, Mark Jacobs popped onto the VN boards to assure us that WAR will not use DRM (which isn’t really needed in MMOs anyway). Wow, that’s a lot of acronyms.

Josh Drescher did another interview (the man is a MACHINE), this time with GamesIndustry.biz entitled, simply, “Warhammer Time!”

Wikis are all the rage these days, it seems, and Warhammer Geek’s launched the fourth (I think) WAR-related wiki. Which one will become the standard? Anyway, you can read there announcement here, and check out (and contribute to) the new Warhammer Geek Wiki here.

Do you want to write about WAR but don’t want to have to hassle with your own blog/site? Warhammer Gamers is hiring (“hiring” being a loose term — don’t think there’s pay involved) new writers to the staff. Go apply today!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “For those who don’t want to see PvE in WAR, sorry, deal with it. For those who don’t want to see any form of PvP in WAR, sorry, deal with it. WAR has been designed, discussed and displayed as an RvR game with both PvE and PvP as part of the game. If you want to PvE your way up the ladder, you can. If you want to PvP your way up the ladder, you can. That’s been the plan from day one and it hasn’t changed at all.” ~ Mark Jacobs

Tobold discusses WAR’s beta sign-up numbers in “Number Inflation” — is it me, or does he seem a little cranky as of late?

“Warhammer Online impressions” at Guardian Unlimited. Likes the big scope of combat in theory, but they say actual combat needs to be tightened up a bit.

You can read up on “Scenarios 101: Part 3″ on the official WAR website. Two Empire vs. Chaos scenarios are presented, one of which features capturable flags a la Battlefield 1942, and the other “murderball”.

Hexus.gaming pumped out a seven-page article on WAR following the Paris event. I particularly liked the page on the Tome of Knowledge and how much they enjoyed it.

Ten Ton Hammer’s got a cool video for anyone interested in playing the Disciple of Khaine class. It’s interesting to note that this class is completely new for WAR, which Mythic and GW had to co-create. Likewise, a Sorceress career video is available.

Highlights to me include: everything you do contributes to Guild XP, Black Guard is still afk, you can travel between newbie zones fairly easy, gear does give a player an advantage (duh) but hopefully not overpoweringly so, PvE and RvR in end game go hand-in-hand, you can’t jump over any other character, Warcamps will be mini-city raids available to the world, renown can earn you stat packages to boost your baseline stats, lowbie players will have access to mounts but won’t own them, CE items are available to all your characters, dungeon loot systems should be “intelligent” and drop usable loot for that group, no integrated voice chat at launch, and no flying.

Loads of videos from the Paris Event, in no particular order:

Careers in WAR: You will earn 30+ Abilities & Morale that can change from fight to fight, you can combine Abilities with other players to create a combo, Morale abilities can turn the tide of a battle, you’ll get 20-25 Tactics to help you in RvR, Tactics can help you customize play sessions between solo and RvR, gives you choices, the Tactics Editor can save your favorite Tactic loadouts, the Mastery system came out of beta feedback, you get 30 Mastery points by the time you hit 40, there will be respecs, huge look at the Sorceress class.

Capital Cities: Cities have two modes (peaceful & contested), they are social hubs, some buildings only available to guilded folk, all the best loot is found in the city RvR situations, lots of utilities, iconic features/landmarks, banks might be attacked by robbers as the city gains in fame, random fun events, guards level up, city ratings equal realm-wide buffs, you will be alerted when your city is under attack.

Realm vs. Realm: PvP and RvR are NOT the same thing — RvR is so much more than that, RvR benefits both yourself and your realm, if you’re playing WAR you *will* be doing RvR, they are concerned about population balance, a lot of discussion on Keep RvR, Keeps should change hands every 4 hours or so but could go as long as days, more discussion on scenarios and city sieges.

Tome of Knowledge: Basic ToK overview, a couple of the unlocks are sending /tells 50 times or clicking on yourself 100 times, it likes to mock you, several tome unlocks in action are shown.

Q&A With Jeff Hickman: Mythic takes a hard line against gold sellers, the best items it the game are earned not bought, they have a plan for visual character growth but it is doubtful they’ll do it, they’re going to retool the dwarf mount, city pvp will be instanced, they generally don’t believe in raids, they have future patches and expansions mapped out, and you can throw tomatoes at captured enemy kings.

Producer’s Presentation: Jeff Hickman and Josh Dreshner, overview of GW and Mythic, they had a playable version of WAR 6 months into development, they seem VERY confident about a fall 2008 launch, and generally you’re getting about an hour and a half overview and summary of everything they’ve already said about WAR. If you’re only going to watch one video, this would be a safe bet.

IGN wrote up a piece on City Sieges. As the cities — 9 in total — will be the ultimate focus of the RvR conflict, this is of special interest to many people anticipating WAR. Cities are being approached a bit like RPG characters: they have five levels to progress through as players accomplish tasks for the city, which will change the face of the city and allow players to access new content. There will even be dungeons under the city to explore.

GameSpy explored Chaos’ Inevitable City to their glee. More discussion in here about the “leveling up” of a city, the RvR war waged between capital cities, and capturable keeps.

GameSpy has its take on the Collector’s Edition, and it’s… pretty much the same as mine, only less swearing and rants against corporate greed in the Bahamas.

Check out Eurogamer’s interview with Jeff Hickman at the Paris event! VERY interesting quote about the release date: “I know the actual dates and it’s not six months. Let’s call it three to six months.”

Mark’s said that not all of the servers will be available for the head start (and, apparently, they are planning on “lots” of servers).

Mark specified what he includes as autumn/fall in terms of the release date: “I posted earlier in the week that I consider the Fall between September 23rd – December 21st. So, if you’re counting on August…”

WarCry gets their interview in with Mark Jacobs about the delay. At this point, is there any need to keep touching on this subject? Is there any previously unhidden factoids that might come to the light? I don’t think so.

WAAAGH! is a Warhammer Online blog written by Syp, a casual-hardcore player, and is dedicated to chewing the fat about WAR's various features, the culture, the news and how Orcs can eat with such a pronounced underbite.